Outside of the Canadian Border is what looks like a war. Unarmed people, throwing themselves at a huge wall of light. Over 5,000 miles of barrier, including the border of Alaska. Forming an near-impenetrable barrier over the nation. While other barriers around cities all over the world exist, Canada is the only nation surrounded by its own bubble.

The Beta infected, covered with tumors and dirty shredded clothes hurl themselves against the wall, day after day & hour after hour. One can sometimes see a figure hover over them. A gaunt, pale creature. Once powerfully built, now looking sick as his red glowing eyes and mouth howl with hunger at the tasty things just out of reach. His shredded cape, blowing in the wind as he points at the barrier, as if that would somehow remove it.

Alpha Man wants in, and he wants the life so close he can taste it.

However, despite the turmoil on the surface, there was something else going on deep underground. Well out of Alpha Man's super hearing and X-ray vision, shielded and concealed, lay a large hole. A hole carved for a purpose, with many side tunnels, air vents, electric lights via hidden generators and solar panels on the surface.

At the center of this place was a bar. A large gathering space for the Freebooters, the source of Canada's food and other material needs kicked back. The bar is named after the giant weremole who dug these tunnels.

The Mole Hole.

Lit by Halloween LEDS and other such things, the Bar has tables and stools sculpted of earth. There is a counter where a robot bartender serves a surprising variety of drinks. Although there are times where supplies of liquor run low. In the center of the main chamber, where the drinks where served, is a large fake Mole about 6 feet tall. Wearing some sort of space suit. It has a sign hung around its neck, which says 'Praise be to the Holey Moley!'

All manner of people are at this Freebooter headquarters/relaxation spot. Ex-Henchmen of supervillains, minor heroes who had family in Canada, former government agents, Aliens trapped on earth. Pretty much if you can imagine it, it will show up and order a drink here at some point.

Above the bar itself is a giant TV screen. It is not plugged in, and there is no internet to use. The Bar does have a movie night, but has a separate projected screen for that. This huge TV is for communications of one person. Thinkmaster. She is able to empower and project herself onto the screen in a holographic display. There she sends out of her orders for the next job of insuring the survival of the human race.

She is not well liked by ether the villain or the hero community. However, her effectiveness in organization and resource management cannot be dismissed. Unlike many villains, her ego is not a priority for her. You might say, she does not need credit when she knows she runs the show.

Now, each of you have arrived in the Mole Hole. Some for the first time, guided here by another Freebooter. Some of you are long term Thinkmaster agents, some have just made it by the skin of their teeth. Now you are doing what everyone here is doing...waiting for the next Thinkmaster announcement.

OOC-You have all just arrived in the Mole Hole. Any member of the Freebooters have been here before. Anyone not directly linked with Thinkmaster or her agents are arriving for the first time. Obviously Holey Moley knows this place very well, as he was contracted by Thinkmaster to build it.

Please introduce your character as they arrive, provide a current description other than the one you already have, and what you are doing to pass the time while you wait. None of you know each other at this moment.

Side note-nobody knows how they got here. Not even Holey Moley. This is for a reason, but you can't remember what that reason is...for now.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:53, Mon 07 Nov 2022.

The door opens, and a young man in a business suit appears, holding the handle, and stepping into the room.  Hanging from his belt is an oversized silvery gauntlet, polished to a mirror finish.    He crosses the distance to the bar in the blink of an eye, leaving a momentary after-image of a path walked across the bar, weaving around tables and people.  He orders a long island iced tea from the robot, and sits on a stool.  Now still, he fades from view after a few more seconds, but when the robot delivers the drink to an apparently empty stool, the glass lifts into the air, and the man appears again, taking a long sip, and setting it down.  He stares into space, seeming lost in thought, as he fades away again.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 19:52, Mon 07 Nov 2022.

Puddle is talking to some of the Freebooters that guided him here all sitting at a table together "Come on man you guys are supposed to have all the good shit here. I told you I can help restock the supply if you help me out."

The young man is looking a little worse for wear. His green longline t-shirt has smudges of dirt, presumably from the journey down, as was the knit cap he wore over his greasy green hair. Despite the disheveled look and blood shot eyes he apparently kept up on dying even the shadow of stubble on his cheeks and neck grass green like his hair.

Dr Alderwood sits at a table a few feet away, but still close enough to hear the young man speak. The older man is wearing a long peacoat, slightly worn from travel, along with a pair of cotton trousers. While he has done his best to keep his hair combed and face clean-shaven, travel has put it's marks on him. He was about to chime in on Puddle's request, when the sudden movement from the door catches his eye. Or rather, the movement avoids catching his eye, despite his best efforts. As a drink is served to an empty bar-stool, Alderwood squints in suspicion. That wasn't one of the Order's tricks, no matter how much he had hoped to find a fellow member here. He took a sip of his water, before getting up and approaching the table with the Freebooters and Puddle.

"You do look like you could use a drink, my miscolored friend. If it is true that you can help resupply, then surely the gentlemen Freebooters here have no reason to deny you?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:43, Mon 07 Nov 2022.

Under literally any other circumstances, being inducted into a subterranean group of raiders led by a known super villain would have qualified in Schism's book as an abject failure.  'The end of the world makes for strange bedfellows.'  He mused, the barest hint of a frown flitting across his features as he noted and discarded the rather defeatist twist that little idea threatened to spread through his thoughts.  Rather than dwelling in that he swept a hand through his bangs, fixing what little damage remained from the hood he'd lowered somewhere along the way through the tunnels.  Between the soft dove-gray of his hoody, waxed black jeans, and the leather jacket draped over his arm, Matthias wouldn't have looked particularly out of place at the mall, let alone in a bar, but that too could be blamed on the apocalypse.  Between his family having moved him back to Toronto during his illness and the sudden onset of the infection he'd had neither access to his old gear nor any real reason to try and take up his old costume.  To be fair, he didn't exactly want the outfit 18 year-old Notion had picked to compliment his mentor.

Trying not to follow too closely in the footsteps of the silvery image that had preceded him, though it did have the interesting side effect of leaving a very convenient open path, Schism made his way to the bar with only a bare trace of hesitance.  Perusing the menu the robotic mixologist had took a bit longer, but with a rye and ginger in hand shortly thereafter he found a table with a little sigh of relief.  Even with the light of the barrier on the horizon as a little assurance of safety, the last few months had been a nerve-wracking game of 'what-ifs' as the more pessimistic part of him waited for the moment Alpha Man and his horde finally found a way in.  Settling back in his seat, Schism let a bit of that lingering worry go as he indulged instead in the idle process of prodding at his own memories, oddly comforted by the knowledge that the gaps therein had to have been something he'd been complicit in creating.

In one corner of the bar stood a woman, or at least what appeared to be a woman. They stood because no chair in the bar could possibly have supported them, and instead stood braced by the floor-length skirt-like mass of shiny black latex that trailed from their waist. They sipped at a huge tankard of some foul, possibly-expired beer that no one else wanted to touch. They were like a human garbage disposal, turning almost any useless biological matter into marginally less useless rubber, almost sixteen hundred pounds of which now composed their body. Somewhere deep inside that huge facade of the fetish-y ballgown was a dainty human body, but no one here had ever seen it in its entirety. They'd show them if they asked. They would do anything that anybody asked.

The woman's name was Antoinette, although some knew them by another name. The name they wore when they terrorized the entire world at the behest of an insane naiad. Lady Latex was once an unfathomably powerful villain, but the Haze had struck them as weak as the other D-listers who now inhabited the Mole Hole. Their entire body burned and ached constantly, gasping for magical energy that it could no longer receive. When the apocalypse had started, they had thought they were dying. In a way, they had died. Their mistress had disappeared since the first days of the end of the world; her presence in their mind, always there, always wise and comforting and empowering, was now gone and left them feeling directionless, hollow, and in constant pain.

They didn't know how they came to the Mole Hole. No one had given them permission to remember, and good girls never do anything without permission. Which meant someone must have given them orders. They followed orders from anyone these days, just to chase away the emptiness and the burning. They weren't complaining; it turns out that the people here had use of even a broken puppet like them. Everyone needs tough yet stylish clothing, and that was only truer than ever during the apocalypse.

They lived to serve. They didn't know how to do anything else. So they sat where they could be seen, where they could watch and listen, always alert. Someone could say something that sounded like an order at any time, and they would be expected to respond instantly, and they could chase away the boredom and the loneliness and the pain for another fleeting moment with the all-consuming joy of servitude.

It rarely actually happened. They knew that no one here trusted them. Why not? Look how innocently they smiled! But they supposed some people were still sore about the whole 'eating people alive and shooting their bones as a weapon' thing. They only did that once and they said they were very sorry, so they was not sure what the problem was!
This message was last edited by the player at 21:42, Mon 07 Nov 2022.

One of the people had much less of an impressive entrance to the bar. This person neither swaggered into the establishment through the open door, nor had they arrived early some hours ago and merely drank in brooding silence until the gathering. One minute there was nobody sitting at the appointed meeting table, and then gradually everyone present registered that there was a person sitting openly in a previously empty seat. From their relaxed pose it was impossible to tell how long that they had been there.

Perhaps mere moments before being noticed.

Perhaps hours.

That was an interesting and potentially disturbing thought.

But they were here now, and that was simply a fact. Though not the biggest person you were every going to meet, the person sitting down clearly had some height to them. Not a giant by any means, but clearly someone you would want on your basketball team. The muscles that went along with the height were not overly developed or bulging either. This were the lithe thews of a jungle cat, more than those of a hulking strongman. All of this was obvious, despite the obscuring outfit this masculine person was wearing. The outfit appeared to be the lovechild of more ergonomic modern body armors, the familiar and ancient Uwagi, and the stylish hoodies of today's...well, the youths of yesteryear would be more accurate. A fukumen covered the man's lower face, while a strange visor of much more high-tech make obscured the eyes. The ruby lenses glowed softly in the shadows of the hood that covered their head. Every inch of the strange attire was dyed blood-red, with only a few black and gold accents to break up the solid silhouette. The only visible weapon the man carried on his person was a curios short, straight-bladed sword that was sheathed on his back, with it's square guard peeked over his right shoulder.

This crimson clad man didn't order a drink from the bar, or even acknowledge anyone else in the subterranean room. In fact, those keen-eyed present noticed that the reason this man looked so unnaturally still was that they were not even breathing. They were as a statue. It might be disturbing to some people. But the opinion of others was the furthest thing from Aethon's mind. He was more concerned with the hole in his memory. he had a vague notion that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, but the thought of someone or something messing with his mind made the former Red Raven very...irate.

Bad things tended to happen when he was displeased.

Dr. Bailey stumbles into the room with a thick textbook in one hand, a mess of papers clutched in the other. She wears a dirty labcoat that is frayed at the ends, with a hole in one elbow. Beneath that, faded dark blue Capri jeans, and She doesn't even seem to realize that the oversized glasses she no longer needs are still clipped to her breast pocket, or she pays it no mind as she stops just inside the door to the commons. Go here, they said. Wait for input, they said. Even in her deepest fugue, Jessica could understand that.

There were times where her scientific mind wanted to do something. To do something. Find the answer to those things out there.

Rival predators. Threats. Prey.

They should be prey.

The baser instincts in her want to destroy them simply because they are annoying. They disrupt the natural order, the ecosystem. Unnatural.

Maybe somewhere deeper down she wants to understand the scientific mystery that they represent.

Deeper still...a desire to return to what once was. To help. To rebuild.

Deep, deep down.

She slides into a chair and scoots it back with a short, scraping screech on the floor. Thump goes the book on the table. She plants the half-crumpled papers, but instead of smoothing them out, she sits hunched over the table, chin resting in her hands. Long, dark locks spill all around her, and she goes very still. Her green eyes are open and alert, though. Very alert.

Looking around. Waiting. Thinking.

Watchful stillness.

There was one thing that Antoinette knew about this strange place. When Dr. Baily moved, her movements moved them as well. That sway was a pale imitation of Mistress' gentle rock and sway, as effortless and natural as the rhythm of the ocean lapping against the shores of their mind. No, Baily's was more akin to the motion of a pendulum, a hypnotic viper threatening danger and the strongest of hugs to choke the unwary into oblivion.

Antoinette's mind was putty; they could not help but be mesmerized. It was in this entranced state that they found their shadow crossing the woman's table, unbidden, perhaps unwelcome. They needed an excuse for blocking the doctor's light. It did not take long for them to find one.

"Your clothes are in disrepair, mistress," says Lady Latex, clothier and tailor with few living peers in these days. "Do you require our services?"

Dr. Bailey turns her head slowly, almost mechanically. Her green eyes dart up at an angle and stay fixed on the towering, glowering...whatever she is standing above her. Slowly Bailey turns to her left, squaring her shoulders toward Antoinette, fixing her with a steady, unblinking gaze of pure evaluation.

"Services?" Dr. Bailey glances down at her clothes, then lifts her gaze again with an almost impossible smoothness. "What...services?"